


On Being, In the Company of Others (With Annotations and Accurate Biography as Written by S. Snape, Himself)

by imochan



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Character Study, HP Rarities, M/M, Rare Pairings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-15
Updated: 2013-08-15
Packaged: 2017-12-23 15:01:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/927881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imochan/pseuds/imochan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Conversations with oneself.</p><p>Written for the HP Rarities fest, 2009.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On Being, In the Company of Others (With Annotations and Accurate Biography as Written by S. Snape, Himself)

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to the mods for running a smooth, exciting fest – and to TJwritter for the prompt! I hope you enjoy (and I apologize for the character-study approach, and the rather experimental style, if that’s not your game ;D )

_Notes of 1972, excerpted._

2nd yr. Arrival, alone. Saw thin boy with dark hair, on platform. Again, at Sorting. Small for a first year: Slytherin. Watched him eat nothing but pudding at feast. & noticed: he did not speak to anyone.

Was told (did not ask): That is R.B.

Thoughts: exactly like his brother.

Also collected mungwort, fresh. Good patch by the old pumpkin vines, apprx. 11 feet from tall pine tree at corner of Grnhouse 4. Suspect wild.

P. Slughorn had only dried stores last term. Think effectiveness suffered in chptrs 9 & 12 of Introductory Potions.

 

\--

 

Retraction.

R.B. not like brother. (Just as bad / No better.) Quiet (initially: shy. Proved wrong.), watchful, apparently incompetent, appears needy. Suspect manipulative.

Result of first fresh mungwort trial with simple belladonna bases: encouraging.

 

\--

 

“Erm. Severus?”

His eyes are closed. He does not look up. He is thinking about the colour of the inside of a dragon’s eggshell. He saw one for the first time a year ago: iridescent, grey, like oiled dove feathers. Hard enough to withstand the smoothing pad of his thumb along the inside membrane, pulling away with his skin like porcelain film. Sharp enough to draw blood, when he was careless.

“Severus?”

He thinks about the first hex he cast with his wand. A translucent red. Moderately powerful. Well aimed. Effective. The upper years stopped bothering with him, soon after that. Most of his own year, too.

“Er. Are you – ”

He opens his eyes. Lupin: Gryffindor. Odd-looking boy. Thin, bony in all the joints of his limbs, in the sharp cut of a collarbone, still smooth and pale in the face. Always turning up around the corner with a hole in the elbow of his jumper, a scrape on his cheek, a broken finger, a gingerly settling of his weight to hide a wince. He’d chalked it up to easy target practice, at first. Except that Potter, that _Black_ , they seemed more interested, at the end of last term, in making Lupin more of an accomplice than a point of ridicule. Then, perhaps: sharp mind, clumsy body.

Lupin is standing by his elbow, at the corner of the table, hip pressed against the vacant chair, holding a roll of parchment, satchel slung tight over his chest. His tie is tugged loose: a limp, skinny knot grazing the third button of his shirt. Over Lupin’s shoulder: the bookstacks with the sign, _Herbology: Blooming Flora: Asia, Eastern._

“What,” he says.

“Sorry,” says Lupin. Appropriate whisper – the library, _after all._ “I thought you were – asleep. I’m not. Interrupting?”

He snorts.

“Right,” says Lupin. Shifts his weight. “Listen. Slughorn, today, he handed us an essay, from last term. Said we’d, er. Well, most of us’d do well to learn from it. I thought – you were interested in Swelling Solutions, weren’t you?”

He lowers his head, the screen of his hair. His open book, a cramped block of spidery typography: _fingers of the bowtruckle appear to be primarily an adaptation like that of a woodpecker's beak, allowing it to more effectively dig out its preferred food of wood lice from_ –Why Lupin should be _watching_ him for any reason other than aiding in the maliciousness of his cohort – absurd.

“Puffer-fish,” says Lupin. As if that explained it all.

He narrows his eyes at the page. _Bowtruckle_ swims. “Puffer-fish,” he says.

“You had a jar of them – the eyes,” says Lupin. “I saw – in your bag. You know, for three weeks.”

"And?” He looks up, focuses on a place just beyond Lupin’s right ear.

“I thought it was yours,” says Lupin. When he smiles, it is with only half of his mouth. Lopsided, the flash of a white eyetooth. “The essay, I mean.”

“How could I possibly know that,” he mutters; he feels his lip curling. “I haven’t read it.”

Lupin sighs; the white tooth disappears behind the tight, straight line of lips. “Right. Look, that’s all I meant. Slughorn didn’t say, but. I thought, you know – if it _were_ you. Well done, I mean.”

He squints: Lupin’s odd-brown eyes blur slightly, dark smudges in a pale, open face. Sometimes, if he looks hard enough at something – a dying insect, a small insolent child screaming in the middle of a street, a pungent ginger root resisting transfiguration – he imagines (he almost _knows_ ) that he is only _this_ far away from making it do exactly what he wants it to do. Just by _thinking_. He knows it can be done. It has to be possible. It is theoretically logical: magic is too strong for most of us, he thinks.

From across the long room: “ _Hsst! Remus!_ ”

Lupin turns: over his shoulder, to the right of _Herbology: Blooming Flora: Asia, Eastern_ , is Sirius Black, fully equipped for Quidditch – a kingly clown with a _broom_ for a scepter – dripping wet grass and thick dirt on the library floor.

“Ugh – Sirius,” Lupin seems to rock back on his heels – preparing for the onslaught. “What’re you – _mud_ – ”

“ _Supper_ ,” says Black, pointedly, far too loud. “Been waiting for yonks – I’m famished.”

“If only to stop Pince from stringing you up by your ears – ” Lupin’s shoulders tighten, relax, tighten, relax – with each drop of dirty water from Black’s slicked hair. “Come on, then.”

“Mind you don’t stand to close to _that_. It’s contagious, you know.”

This is new, he thinks. Or maybe: without Potter. It is rare they don’t make him stand up to his own humiliation, his own inability to fight back without risk of Professorial reprimand, and a mouthful of bat bogeys. So maybe, without Potter, this one is just more likely to take that blue-blood stance of cutting, feigned indifference. You can’t breed that out, he thinks. Just because your tie is red, and you shout about _Up Lions Up_ now, it doesn’t mean you’re any different from your brother. _You’re no better_.

“ _Out_ ,” says Lupin.

 _Yes_ , he thinks. _Out. All of you: out._

And yet: _Well done._

\--

 

Received letter: of no importance. Was called to P. Slughorn’s office: commended. (It was my essay. _Five Common Genera of Tetraodontidae in Western Swelling Solutions_. Written: May 14, 1972.) Asked to assist in tutoring some of slower, younger years.

Said: depended on _whom_.

Said: would probably not be equipped to be _tutor_. Do not like other people.

Slughorn: laughed. _Most people, Severus, do not like other people. This has got very little to do with being well-equipped to teach, you know._

Do not appreciate being lied to. Assumes others know what I need.

Thoughts about masking hyacinth scent in Sopohori, for easing disguise in additional mixtures: inconclusive.

 

\--

 

_Conversations, Connections: From 1975._

“Severus?”

He does not look up. The worktable is smooth, cool, under his palms. There is a lump of tubeworm that needs to be scraped off the bottom of his cauldron. The air still smells like cooked chestnuts, raw liver. An experimental failure: frustrating. There is a blot of ink on the open textbook page, above his notes.

He looks up. Regulus Black in the doorway. Shirt buttoned high to his throat. Hair cropped to his cheekbones. Faint sheen of sweat on his nose, forehead. There has been a flu going around, this winter. Perhaps: a slight fever.

“Are you?” says Regulus. “Ah – I’m here for. Slughorn said – ”

“You failed,” he says. “The exam.”

“Ah,” says Regulus. His arms are crossed; he is holding himself like small animal. His eyes dart sideways: dark, narrow. “Maybe.”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe. Yes.”

“Sit there,” he says. He points to the stool opposite himself, on the other side of the table.

Regulus gathers himself into the seat, robe-sleeves bunched up around his elbows: he is a dark, heavy mass of soft folds and tight brows. His small mouth is a moue: discontent.

“I don’t know why – ” Regulus starts. “It’s not like I was ever. You know, very good.”

“Perhaps,” he mutters, though he knows it is not true. “You show ‘promise’.”

Regulus makes a haughty noise, a laugh tangled up in the throat. “Maybe they’re just hoping I will,” he says, and pulls his inkwell from his bag. His quill is ostrich feather: clearly expensive. Perhaps: some kind of a gift. Family heirloom, thinks Severus. Lovely, to let inanimate objects do all the talking of _expectations_ , for you.

“Antidotes,” he says, to Regulus. “Will continue to make up the majority of the syllabus for your term. Write down the antidotes to the following potions, without consulting your texts, and I will correct them: Regressive Growth, Swelling, Befuddlement.”

Regulus dips his quill.

It is quiet. A few sounds: not many. All distinct. The drip of the leaky faucet in the basin at the back of the classroom. The scratch of a trapped fairy’s fingernails, under a bell jar in the storage cupboard. The creaking life of stones and mortar. The crinkle of parchment under human fingers.

He has been dreaming, lately. He hates it. It makes him unfocused, when awake. He has been making notes of it in his books – when he wakes in the winter night and is still able to feel the fear, the exultation, the quaking, terrifying, undefined lust. His naked skin looked gray, this morning, when he woke in the half-dark of the early hours, and sat on the edge of the bed with the sheet spooled around his hips, wrinkled over his thin, scabby, boyish legs. It felt as though he was losing his grip. That the world was beginning a series of bottomless falls.  
It is a little terrifying. Disorienting. He thinks about cobweb straining. He drums his fingers.

“You know,” says Regulus: as if prompted. There is the scratching of his quill, the squeak of fresh ink. “You never talk to anyone.”

He does not answer. He is thinking about cobweb straining. He is thinking about the tubeworm innards on the corner of the table. If they are not cleaned off, they will dry and crust and be a nuisance. Perhaps Slughorn will scold him.

“Rabastan,” Regulus continues. “Crabbe. You never talk to any of them. They say you’re odd. Maybe that you think you’re better than them.”

“Maybe I am better than them,” he says, feeling his teeth scrape against his lower lip when he speaks. “Since I find no use in speaking about things that are none of my _business_.”

Regulus’s shoulders move, in the folds of his robes: a black velvet shrug. His quill squeaks, skitters on the paper. “Damn,” he murmurs. “Have you got a blotter?”

“No.”

Another shrug. A settling. The clink of a quill nib in the inkpot.

“Don’t you get lonely?”

He looks up, again. Regulus is watching him. Eyes like his brother’s: deep-set, dark. Too dark, sometimes, to see the pupils. The eerie sensation of a predator, still far off.

“No,” he says.

“I do,” says Regulus. “I try. I try not to, you know. But. They don’t really want to talk to me, either. They think I’m weak, maybe.”

“Maybe,” he mutters.

“Maybe,” says Regulus. “Yeah. Because. Sirius, you know.”

“I don’t,” he says. “I don’t care to.”

“I’m sorry,” says Regulus, suddenly. His voice is sharper. Louder. _Ah_ , thinks Severus. _This is a practiced speech_. “I’m sorry. That he picks on you.”

“I don’t care,” he says.

“It’s not fair. But you know, I. I don’t think that. What he does. I don’t know why he doesn’t like you, but. Mother says he’s made his choices. With Potter. And the other two, Mother says they’re all not worth much. Not pureblood. Certainly not very smart – that’s what Mother says – if they’ve decided to hang onto him. Anyway, it’s not. What I mean. I mean, I don’t really understand why he – anyway. Anyway, I think you’re brilliant.”

Something new. He pauses – he can’t help but look over, across the table. Two spots of colour – the pink of a lacewing belly – high on Regulus’s cheeks. His fingers are stroking the soft ends feathers of his quill: nervous.

“You’re smart,” says Regulus. “Really. Er. Really, quite smart.”

Regulus reaches out. Regulus touches his hand, with his fingers. Regulus is touching his hand.

Severus works by feel: by the slippery touch of liquid or the brittle snap of dried herbs in a yellowed palm. He knows the texture of yarrow by the press of a thumb, violets crushed between fingers signal that sickening sing-song wafting scent. He knows cauldron bottoms, smooth and aged like fingerprints. Ladles, labels, jars, vials, image is nothing more than how it feels to him in his hands.

Regulus is pale, smooth, slightly damp. The pads of his fingers are slightly rougher than he’d thought they’d be. Had he thought about them? At all? He would consult his notes. Maybe he’d not though of his fingers. Maybe his face. Maybe it had been him, in the dreaming. The undefined thing of limbs and skin and unsettling vertigo. Smooth cheeks, like those prone to scrapes and bruises: the blood-soft skin of an apple. He can almost taste it: like a fragrant steam, pooling in the back of the throat, surprising the membranes.

He turns his wrist. He turns his hand, palm up, on the table. He turns his hand, palm up, underneath Regulus’s fingers. He can feel damp heat, the creases of a heartline, lifeline, headline, _palmar fascia, pollicis brevis_. The tight curl of fingers, around his own.

He looks up. By sight, all of this: it is only Regulus’s breathless smile.

 

\--

 

_Of 1976, and etc._

Entirety of summer spent as assistant in Diagon Alley: Apothecary, Slug & Jiggers. Slept above storeroom, on adequate bedding, between powdered eggs and drying racks. Left shop three times: once for errand on M. Jiggers’ behalf (Gringotts, dark chocolate), once to remove bag of rotting slug livers from cellar, once to acquire supplies for new term. Mid-July, Diagon smells of sweating stones and oxidized moss (and human bodies): undesirable.

Productive time. Restless. Dreamt too much: still of ephemeral, flesh-coloured things. Spent days in smoke and darkness, nights in thick haze. Wrote two letters. Father died. The whole world wafted by: hot, dark. Lavender seedlings – planted in June – died in their pots.

 

\--

 

“Ah. Severus?”

He looks up. Lupin is poised in the doorway of the compartment, holding it open with the heel of his palm. A suitcase is teetering at his ankles. His has not changed into his robes: tattered trainers, denim, a jumper, a thin coat in the colour of mushroom flesh. There is the loose edge of a linen-white bandage curled over the thin bones of his wrist, just under the hem of his sleeve. There is a thick-looking, yellow-rimmed bruise on his neck: about the size of a galleon, dark-centered and vaguely translucent, the eye of a mothwing. It is just under his collar, coy against the slip of his scarf. To be still bumping into things at the beginning of sixth year, bungling about and getting flesh and bone and muscles caught in the mechanics of the world, at the start of adulthood: it defies logic. It makes him _squeamish_. There is a patch of stubble on Lupin's jaw, where the skin is stretched vellum-tight over the bone. Small flecks of rust-coloured hair. Absurd. _Adolescent_.

“Yes,” he says. “What.”

“Hullo,” says Lupin, and shoves the suitcase into the compartment with the toe of his shoe. He seems to have gained several inches in his limbs. “Do you mind?”

“I do,” he says.

“Oh, you do not,” says Lupin; bends his knees, crouches to stow his bag under the seat. The hem of Lupin's coat rides up over his curved spine: a glimpse of the _latissimus dorsi_ , a dusting of freckles.

He gathers his small satchel into his lap; stands to leave.

“No, it’s just me,” says Lupin, twisting, arm half-raised as if to catch him at the knees. “I’m sorry. It’s. It’s just me.”

"And that's supposed to be comforting."

"Why not?" says Lupin. "They. They don't know where I am. I just wanted some peace."

He snorts; it whistles in his nose. He feels overdressed - warm. Lupin keeps _looking_ at him, and there is a line of sweat forming at his nape; he feels it under his collar. "Spare me."

"Some quiet," says Lupin. "I mean."

"I'm sure you'll find the _empty_ compartment quite to your liking, then." He grips the satchel, thinks about the three steps it would take to get him to the door.

"It's not a trick," says Lupin. He is standing now. He is standing in the compartment, an arms-length away, with his hands in the pockets of his thin, mushroom-coloured coat, wearing worn shoes, with a bruise on his neck, covered in early autumn sunlight. There is stubble on his jaw. And Severus has seen the small of his back. It is grave, he thinks. This is a horrible thing, this thing that makes things seem different than they really are: things like _sun-covered_ and _dustings_ and how the mothwing center of bruised skin is nothing but microscopic blood vessels burst open under the trauma of blunt force, and yet here I am, he thinks, I am wondering how it would _taste under my tongue_ , and I hate it, he thinks. I hate it. I hate this.

“It's not,” says Lupin, again. Sheepish in the hesitant lift of a shoulder, only half of his mouth seems to smile. “They’ve honestly no idea.”

He wants to narrow his eyes. He wants to scoff and turn on his heel and storm out the door. He wants to show Remus Lupin just how bloody suspicious he is of him. Of _all of them_. That he knows, he is not fooled – Remus Lupin is one of them. But he sits.

But he sits. He sits, and thumbs the edge of his satchel, finds the hard leather corners of Hipworth’s _Moderne Herbologies & Black Kettlings_, draws it out. Mr Jiggers had handed it to him, that morning, along with his summer’s pay. 103 galleons, 10 sickles, 17 knuts.

“I’m not going to ask why,” he mutters, into the open pages, covers heavy on his thighs. He is not reading.

“I know,” says Lupin.

“You’re not going to tell me, unsolicited.” A statement.

“Definitely not,” says Lupin.

“You should get something for that,” he says. He surprises himself.

“Hm?”

He does not look up – he touches his own neck with two fingers, just above the collarbone. (He feels his own clammy skin, the grit of sandpaper and the film of old cauldron smoke, settled on him now, like clothing.

“Ah,” Lupin says, softly. “Er. Well. I suppose, yes.”

“It’s an idiotically simple remedy. Murtlap. _Intermediate Potions_ , page 96. You must have passed your OWLs; you're not an utter failure. Not like Pettigrew.”

“Mm,” a small laugh. “Maybe not. Well. Either way, it’ll go away on its own. Eventually.”

The train whistles. It rattles. It belches steam. It pulls away from the station. And Lupin is looking out the window. And he is looking at Lupin. He is looking at the sun in Lupin's hair, and thinking of dandelions, which means he is suddenly thinking about the application of dandelion musks to the traditional Tugwood configuration of Blood-Replenishment, which means it is much worse than he thought. Which means this thing, this thing about people - how they look - this thing about people who are taller than you, and crowned with red hair, or people who are pale and slightly damp with fever, with heat, who tell you that you are brilliant and touch your fingers, or people who wear coats that are too small for them, and have bruises on their skin – this thing has suddenly strayed from the superficial. This thing is dangerous, he thinks.

The moment it becomes _inspiration_ , science is doomed to poetry, he thinks, and _bloody poetry_ , he thinks. Poetry is full of people like _Sirius Black_. Poetry is the slow destroyer of every logical grain in a body: poetry eats it up, spits it out in a wad of sticky, odiferous _passion_ , ensnaring the unsuspecting and drowning them too. Poetry makes men wax morality. Poetry is the reason, he thinks, I hate myself for looking at Remus Lupin.

 

\--

 

On the train, Lupin said: _He’s losing his mind. I’m fairly certain._

This: not surprising. His loyalty: disappointing. Blind. Stupidity, unbecoming.

He said: _His family. His brother. You know._

Don’t know. Don’t _care_ to.

He said: _You know Regulus. I’m sure you do._

I might. But I might not. Uncomfortable.

And yet: looks to be true. On the stairwell, saw Black cross paths with R.B., Lupin’s tattered shoes like a shadow on his heels. Looked sick. _Ill._ Weak enough around the eyes to suggest all it would take to knock him down might be a feather, the right word, the _wrong_ word, the slip of truth into his tea.

Revenge: suddenly not so immoral, when suddenly so possible.

 

\--

 

There was a moment. When the door was open. When he still had the splintered handle under his palm. When his eyes were open. When the moon’s light broke through the shattered slats of the rotted eaves, dappled, sharply beautiful. When he saw the white shaft of brightness slice through the dust, through the darkness, through the body of a monster: the long purple tongue, the claw-curve scythes of canine fangs, the high, bony vertebrae.

There was a moment, when he saw it, and they looked at each other, the monster and Severus Snape. And he thought he heard his name.

 

\--

 

_Afterwards. General Conclusions._

Did not look away.

Dumbledore said: was _saved._

But I did not look away.

Let them all unravel: R.B. and all. Let them try for fearsome. Let them try to wrap me up in it, these loose threads they have to keep themselves together. Tattoos. Changeable bones. Family. Let them all unravel in it: I can pick at a tear, remember where it is, widen it, tug on a loose thread, I can watch as they split themselves a little along their seams. Let them all unravel. I will stay whole.

Refuse to be indebted.

_Will always save myself._


End file.
